Beach Camping

The weekend that thunderstorms lashed the city (again), Cara and I decided to go beach camping on Fire Island. The mosquitoes were well behaved, and the weather out there actually cooperated with our plans fairly nicely too. We had a few hours of lounging in the sun:





As the temperature dropped we headed off to find a spot to pitch the tent:





And then dinner:



Some raindrops started sprinkling down right as we finished eating, so we threw the rainfly on the tent and settled in for a raucous thunder and lightning show, to a soundtrack of Arcade Fire over Cara's ipod with headphone splitters. It was a little scary, but really really stunning being in the middle of a summer thunderstorm with just a thin sheet of nylon separating ourselves from roaring thunderclaps and lightning so bright that it looked like stadium lighting trained on our tent.

The next morning everything was calm again, so we headed back to the Watch Hill area for breakfast (roughin' it!):





And then we joined rangers Rosemary and Mike on a canoe tour around the area's salt marshes: